Rane is a home-grown company - all their products are made in Mukilteo WA, USA. HAL (Heuristic Audio Lab), is their hardware/software architecture for installed audio, such as restaurants, hotels, convention centers, schools and churches. The HAL name makes subtle reference to the rogue computer in the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey (note the glowing red orb in the HAL logo). The idea of drag and drop sound system design and hardware interfacing isn't new, but Steve described ways their implementation overcomes past shortcomings. Rane took great pains to design in friendly features that help guarantee a good design, proper installation and operation, and novice user ease. (Click here for information on RANE and HAL) 

Steve Macatee was born very young in Philadelphia. In 1986 he received a BS in Electronic Engineering from Monmouth College, New Jersey, USA. This is not too far from the "armpit of the world", Elizabeth, NJ - but believe it or not, there is a valid reason New Jersey is called "The Garden State." Steve has worked at Rane Corporation since 1987 in many capacities: from manufacturing; mechanical, interface & PCB design; in-house & product documentation; analog, digital embedded systems and - luckily for everyone - not much GUI or DSP software design. After a decade in R&D Engineering, Steve underwent an Inverse Dilbert Transform and moved to sales for 4 years as a technical and consultant/contractor liaison. He currently heads the New Product Development and Training department at Rane where he works to define new product & technology ideas.

Steve presented the unique architecture of the 30 or so hardware products and their Halogen software for Windows that comprise Rane's HAL System for audio installation applications. There are a variety of analog I/O and digital transports supported and hidden in this quite varied product line. Deeper under-the-hood, each of the four varying I/O-size HAL drag-and-drop DSP "brains" have a Linux computer that runs the show for each and every connected product. Thus, HAL is a centralized DSP architecture, although several peripheral products also contain DSP.

Each HAL rack device includes a web server for customizable smart-phone, tablet or PC end user web page interfaces, plus a 3rd-party Ethernet control server for ASCII text over TCP/IP control (e.g., AMX & Crestron). Also, unique to any product in any industry of which Steve is aware, each HAL both stores and automatically loads the firmware for any connected HAL device in a matter of seconds. Since all HAL peripheral devices are hot pluggable and swappable using shielded CAT 5e or better cables with standard RJ-45 TIA/EIA-568-A (or -B) termination, auto-firmware loading ensures immediate device compatibility across all vintages of HAL products. With the product family entering its fifth year of production, this means devices shipped last week can plug in to devices shipped five years ago, and vice versa. No action on anyone's part is required (other than plugging in properly) to hear audio using the oldest or newest devices. Other than the HAL device's Ethernet port and a Dante expansion product, no other HAL peripherals use Ethernet for transport. This is by design to provide solutions Ethernet cannot provide - especially Halogen's "Get on the Plane" indicator.

The same software code is compiled to create Halogen software for Windows and the Linux code for the HAL hardware. This guarantees system audio & control behaviors seen at the software design stage must exactly match the hardware behaviors once the system is physically installed. For many installations, the design happens months or years before the buildings are completed and the audio system is installed. The goal for this approach is to enable verifying the design before bidding and finalizing the hardware equipment list and audio system & control programming. As project managers in any discipline know, changes in a plan made late in the process require costly change requests.

In this presentation, Steve first provided an overview of the audio concept of drag-and-drop. In the Halogen software, both the hardware devices and the DSP audio blocks (compressors, EQs, mixers...) are drag and drop. For the hardware, one must select each device and its corresponding physical connection port thus informing the HAL device which device to expect and where it is in the system. For the software, drag and drop does not work like a slot to place audio blocks into in the way "plug-ins" work. Rather, in Halogen you drop the input & output blocks in Halogen's Processing Workspace (e.g., RCA, XLR, USB Audio, Dante, screw-driver "Euroblocks" or Phoenix connectors), then add the mixers, levels, EQ and 50+ other audio signal processing blocks, and wire them together - just like patching in the audio cables in the back of an old school analog rack.

On a live connected HAL System, when all devices in the design are physically in place the software's Host Status (aka "Get on the Plane") indicator turns green. This key element of the system is the indicator that informs the HAL DSP brain to expect each piece of hardware in the system. The HAL system does not pass audio at all until the user programs the audio flow itself in the Processing half the Halogen interface. Steve calls this the "get on the plane indicator" because the green light means you should be good to go (or maybe if this green light isn't on, it means the sound contractor has to get on a plane and go figure it out). When HAL shows green, an extensive list of facts are known to be true about the proper operation of the system; something non-trivial in a large, distributed installed system.

To wit:

1. everything in the system designed years ago is installed and OK
2. all devices and wiring are in the right places
3. all cables go to the correct locations
4. all cable crimps on the RJ45s are good
5. all control and audio are working
6. names for remotes are already set up
7. proper firmware is installed in all devices

• Pack of 3 earplugs (courtesy Gary Louie) - Mark Rogers
• Courtesy Rick Chinn/Uneeda Audio:
  • Replacement Shure SM57 grille - Robert Riggs
  • Hosa patchbay, used - Gary Louie
• Audio CD (courtesy Dan Mortensen/Dansound Inc) - Kathleen Gray
• Amprobe IR thermometer (courtesy Rick Rodriguez/Fluke):
  • Greg Mauser
  • Camilo Vargas
  • Ron Rice
• Courtesy Steve Macatee/Rane:
  • Rane mug - Dawn Pfund
  • Rane folio notebooks:
    • Nicole Harris
    • Dan Mortensen
    • Dana Olson
    • Anthony Johnson
    • Janey Wallick
    • Mike Matesky
  • Galaxy polarity checker - Steve Malott